April 16, 2009

One element of the conventional wisdom about racial achievement gaps that has become particularly popular in recent years is the idea that the gap is caused by the fact that the parents of poor children tend to have small vocabularies and generally don't engage their children in mentally stimulating discussions. Much of this tracks back to a project several decades ago by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, who recorded 1300 hours of 42 families during various in-home sessions over 2.5 years, and then tabulated every word they said.

Not surprisingly, they found that professional class parents spoke to their children with larger vocabularies, had more interesting things to say, and tended to speak more encouragingly to their children along the lines of "Why, that's a very interesting observation, honey; why do you think that is?" In contrast, the welfare moms' tended to more often interact with their children in the "Shut yo' mouth" mode.

Hart and Risley write:

Before children can take charge of their own experience and begin to spend time with peers in social groups outside the home, almost everything they learn comes from their families, to whom society has assigned the task of socializing children.

I remember when I got the memo from Society informing me that my wife and I had been assigned the task of socializing our children. It came as quite a shock, let me tell you.

We were not surprised to see the 42 children turn out to be like their parents; we had not fully realized, however, the implications of those similarities for the children's futures.

So, the conventional wisdom insists, what we must do is take poor children away from their homes each day from age one upward and put them in day care staffed by college trained professionals from age one onward, who will mentally stimulate them by speaking with large vocabularies.

But, is it really true that "almost everything they learn comes from their families?" Well, no. Among other sources, a lot of what children learn comes from the media.

For example, I've heard about this brightly colored cartoon show about the adventures of a ten-year-old boy and his wacky family, and each episode features the carefully concentrated cognitive liveliness of about a dozen of the most mentally effervescent Harvard graduates of recent years. And it's on free TV twice a day in most cities!

You might have heard of it, too: it's called The Simpsons.

Each of the 450 or so episodes of The Simpsons is a lot more mentally stimulating than listening to your parents or to your daycare worker talk. (Okay, well, some of the episodes from this decade might not live up to that standard, but there are still a couple of hundred good ones.)

By the way, I haven't been able to find anything on Google about the Nielsen Ratings of The Simpsons in black households. It probably doesn't help the shows' rating among blacks that the writers are clearly completely terrified of poking fun at blacks, so the show is kind of boring for black audiences.

Thus, out of the huge cast of recurring characters, the only black ones are Dr. Hibbert and his wife, who go back to the show's ancient rivalry with The Cosby Show, and one each of two interchangeable white-black pairs: Homer's coworkers Lenny and Carl and the cop partners Eddie and Lou. After 20 years, I still can't tell you which one are the black guys and which ones are the white guy. Presumably, the interchangeability of the two white-black pairs is an in-joke from the writers about how afraid they are of touching anything black-related.

The Simpsons? Yeah, FAR better than truly wholesome boob tubeness. If The Simpsons is good, for true "stimulation" why not let the little blank slates imbibe deeply from The Family Guy and South Park, then stand out of the way of the next generation of Lords Of The Flies.

So, the conventional wisdom insists, what we must do is take poor children away from their homes each day from age one upward and put them in day care staffed by college trained professionals from age one onward, who will mentally stimulate them by speaking with large vocabularies.But when this flawed idea was followed to its logical conclusion with some Australian Aborigine and native Canadian kids, the leftists called it a crime against humanity. Go figure.

If you didn't know, early in the 20th century reassigning kids from such backgrounds to white families was a popular leftist idea. Now they say it was evil. I can easily imagine them changing their mind on it again at some point.

Keep up the Simpsons observations- and I agree that show went downhill big time in 2001-2002- I think they now have woman writers or something. Gotten really liberal, feminist, GOP is the devil, etc. It is barely watcheable now- really, really unfunny. They've even made Homer unlikeable- something I never thought possible.

My favorite minor character was always Professor Frink and I also like the high pitched teenager.

Article: "Rather than concede to the unmalleable forces of heredity, we decided that we would undertake research that would allow us to..." maximize employment opportunities for members of... "Copyright by the American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO."

Steve, I know your kids are older, but there are now a dizzying array of incredibly well-designed shows for young kids that are pretty cleverly constructed to stimulate cognitive function. A lot of these shows, some of them for free on PBS and a lot more on Nick Jr. and the Disney Channel, use extensive research drawing on everything from pediatric neurology to advertising to put their messages across (mostly things like problem solving, vocabulary building, and pre-K skills). I'd go so far to speculate that shows like Sesame Street (especially the animated interstitials) and Blue's Clues are responsible for a good chunk of whatever Flynn effect has been taking place in the last three decades. Tv programmers simply know a lot more about stimulating the human brain at its most plastic than they used to.

What I don't know, though, is the breakdown of who's actually watching the good shows-- whether they cut across demographic boundaries or whether white and Asian parents are dutifully clicking on Blue's Clues while black and Hispanic parents feed their kids lousy movies on DVD and whatnot. Are there any studies on the subject?

I remember the Simpsons being very popular with blacks when they first appeared, enough so to inspire news articles. They indentified with the family at least as much as whites did. That the characters were orange didn't hurt either-- a practical reason to limit the number of darker characters. Blacks could see all of Springfield as the ghetto.

Marge, the tall-haired matron with a drawl; Lisa, the blues saxophonist; Homer, the deep-throated, pudgy doughnut snarfer with the anachronous name; Bart, the incorrigible-but-friendly brat. Except for Homer living in the same house, it's all pretty black.

My mother works in an inner city school district teaching 1st and 2nd graders, mostly black and Mexican. Many of the black kids come to school with a vocabulary straight out of hardcore rap but never having used a crayon or scissors before. I don't think having them watch The Simpsons is going to help them much, the problems they have at home are just too large to solve with television programming.

The Mexican kids on the other hand are very polite but don't speak English and can't learn because they spend half the year on the other side of the border. Also it's a drag to the other students to spend time teaching the Mexicans English at a lower level than the rest of the class is learning at.

It's too bad they don't actually have black actors doing the voice over work. I remember hearing a black actor once say that a "black show" is any show with a black actor on it. I believe the black characters on the Simpsons and The Family Guy are voiced by white actors...

"My favorite minor character was always Professor Frink and I also like the high pitched teenager."

I agree with Charles Murray that "The Simpsons" is wonderful entertainment, but we should strive for much better. That being said... Sideshow Bob is the greatest minor character of them all.

I do have young children: ages 9 years to 12 months. Most of the shows, especially on cable, aimed at the very young, are quite good. "Wonder Pets" is darling. Most suffer, still, from the belief that I.Q. can be raised significantly and permanently. Murray in his latest book, "Real Education", said young children would most benefit from learning facts as they have an awesome gift for memory at this age.

The shortcomings of these shows stand out like a sore thumb after reading that book.

PBS used to be really great, but they have moved fully into the realm where it is no longer secret that the audience they are interested in is minority, especially black. I wouldn't mind such a focus if these shows were on BET, but it's kind of unnerving to see that my government is really only concerned with some children, especially as we're taxpayers.

Also, after PBS got the rights to "Bob the Builder", they retooled it and it is pure Gaia worship and social Marxism. Our children happened to be fans of the show at the time of the switch and the change was simply stunning. My husband flipped out when, of all things, the new Bob pours PINK concrete. "Honey, Did I just see Bob pour pink concrete?!" Asked after umpteen observations of multicultural and feminist drivel. "I think so, but was it pink before? Perhaps they just are trying to be colorful in some ill-advised way." "No, it is a colorful show, but the concrete was gray. Why on earth did they make the concrete pink!!??"

Around the 5th season or so, there was a scene where Homer is watching a black stand-up comic on TV. The black comic seemed to be a sort of parody of Pryor/Murphy whites-are-nerdy bits. It made the black comic look really stupid, because he didn't really tell any jokes or do insightful impressions. But then, the scene might also be taken doubly as making fun of whites, because Homer laughs uproariously at it, "Oh it's true! It's true! We're so lame!"

Then there was another episode where Homer wants to do standup comedy, and he says, "I know, I'll do some jokes about how white people are different than black people... you see, white people have names like 'Lenny,' but black people have names like 'Carl'!"

I'm with you anonymous. Last year I threatened one of my children, five at the time, with "making [him] watch television" if he kept on doing whatever naughty thing it was he'd been doing to his sister. His eyes began to tear up, and he pleaded, "No, dad, I'm sorry - please don't make me stupid."

Kevin Michael Grace: What a pleasure to see your name in any thread. Is The Ambler about to return from the grave (and can the archives yet be retrieved?), or are you (like Mo in the latest Simpsons episode, oddly enough)logging in from the public library?

Your statement about Seinfeld is true, but I believe Mr. "Caesar" is correct that The Simpsons has ratings among blacks and even Hispanics that are comparable to its ratings among whites. At least this was true ten years ago, when I read that.

First anonymous: I agree The Simpsons is not appropriate for small children, but sheesh, have you ever watched it? (at least pre-2000 or so)

Later anonymous: I enjoyed Sesame Street when I was young, but I think the verdict on it is mixed: Good for reading skills, bad for attention span. In more recent times I have seen Dora the Explorer a couple times out of curiosity, and while I understand the science behind it, I was creeped out when she addressed the camera and paused, as she did frequently. This pitch-perfect parody is the funniest (and possibly the only funny) thing I have seen on Saturday Night Live in the last five years: http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/tv-funhouse-maraka/84996/

4/16/2009That seems odd. For one to say that it is inaccurate for President Barack Obama to be called black, then in the same sentence describe cartoon characters as black and white is strikingly disingenuous. In the simpsons case, the "white" characters have yellow skin .. and has anyone ever noticed that all the "black" characters in modern cartoons have brown skin: simpsons, south park, family guy, etc. My point is .. if it is inaccurate for President Barack Obama to be called black, then it is inaccurate for "black" people to be called black. If we are honestly striving for accuracy then "black" people are to be called brown or dark brown people.

You see, white people and black people use the Internet differently. White people be all (affecting the voice of a constipated Yalie), "Oh dear, the Dow Jones has just lost 70 points!" While black people be all (affecting a voice that could punch through concrete), "Dayum! Those are some big ol' titties!"

The isteve staple about the complete ignorance of hispanics by American elites applies massively to the Simpsons. The crown of contemporary social satire and all it's got for hispanics is Bumblebee Man.

Hasnt stopped them from running two (that I know of) open borders episodes.

"So, the conventional wisdom insists, what we must do is take poor children away from their homes each day from age one upward and put them in day care staffed by college trained professionals from age one onward, who will mentally stimulate them by speaking with large vocabularies."

"No, Maneesha, you're not as pretty as Amanda. That's because of your African ancestory. And you'll never be very smart either. But work hard and listen to the white folks and you might be able to get a job as a maid someday. And if you're really well behaved maybe Amanda will let you touch her pretty blonde hair .. well, not touch."

"Keep up the Simpsons observations- and I agree that show went downhill big time in 2001-2002- I think they now have woman writers or something. Gotten really liberal, feminist, GOP is the devil, etc. It is barely watcheable now- really, really unfunny. They've even made Homer unlikeable- something I never thought possible."

Really, it's not even an intelligent leftism. It's like the writers are getting their themes from DailyKos.

The old Simpsons portrayed small town American folk as simple but generally as decent and sympathetic. New Simpsons seethes with rage towards them. It may reflect a cultural change. Maybe the writers were always Harvard elitists, but Harvard elitists have become much more likely to hate the "unenlightened" parts of the country.

I remember one episode where a Muslim family moves in and the ignorant yahoos led by Homer all think that they're terrorists. Homer used to be an actual character who was dumb/lovable. Now his stupidity makes him a representative for middle America.

A good explanation of the language gap (and the Hart and Risley) can be found in the first six minutes of this video by Zig Engelmann.

Even though hart and Risley suggest that the language gap has an environmental cause, adoption studies like the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study show that it's more complicated than that. In that study, low-SES whites and black children were placed with high-SES college educated white families where you'd think there would have been no language gap. And yet, the adopted kids performed as their genetics would have predicted.

Apparently, even highly educated parents cannot compensate for the learning deficiencies in these kids. And good educators like Engelmann will tell you that it is very difficult to provide instruction to very young children even in a preschool setting.

Maybe, RKU, it's more that little wolves naturally grow up to bite things they don't like so their mothers nip then when they're naughty, and little pigeons naturally grow up to coo so their mothers coo over them.

A few years ago some sociology professor, or 'arts' advocate (or something) put out word that people who listened to Mozart when they're infants grow up to be high-IQ. The obvious solution to our society's problems? Give new mothers Mozart CDs. I wonder if any mothers who weren't college-educated even broke the seals on the jewel cases.Makin' the world a better place.

Characters who oppose cultural pluralism are portrayed as stupid and bigoted (Lichter et al. 1994, 251), the classic being the Archie Bunker character in Norman Lear's All in the Family television series.

Jewish liberal Norman Lear had created Archie Bunker, who became a beloved icon for millions of television viewers. In an important sense, Archie’s primary role was to usher out the older era of a white, male-dominated America, represented by people like himself, and to instruct this soon-to-be disestablished class in the manners and attitudes befitting a new, multicultural America, one in which blacks could own their own businesses and homosexuals could come out of the closet.Most of all, this new, multicultural America was one in which Jews and all things Jewish had a new-found prominence. “By the end of his twelve years on prime-time television,” the Pearls inform us, “Archie Bunker, America’s best-known bigot, had come to raise a Jewish child in his home, befriend a black Jew, go into business with a Jewish partner, enroll as a member of Temple Beth Shalom, eulogize his close friend at a Jewish funeral, host a Sabbath dinner, participate in a bat mitzvah ceremony, and join a group to fight synagogue vandalism."

The isteve staple about the complete ignorance of hispanics by American elites applies massively to the Simpsons. The crown of contemporary social satire and all it's got for hispanics is Bumblebee Man.Also Dr. Nick Riviera.

Kevin Michael Grace:I remember reading the Nielsen ratings in USA Today when Seinfeld was the No. 1 rated show in America. Among black viewers it was rated something like No. 82.Well, if nothing else, then at least the Black folk of America can proudly proclaim that they have good taste in television.

Black kids younger than 12, particularly males, love The Simpsons, as do whites, Asians, Hispanics and whoever. The appeal is universal, although it begins to fade during adolescence. Exposure to the show definitely helps build vocabulary, and the smarter kids will begin to pick up on the cultural subtleties. BUT knowing how to pronounce a word and toss it around in conversation doesn't necessarily translate to recognizing it on paper or being able to put it there, which is of course important (in a narrow sense) because success on standardized testing does indeed have a lot to do with mastering vocabulary---not just the "vocabulary of testing" professional educators yak about but just plain vocabulary. A far-below-grade-level test I saw recently for 4th graders asked which reading passage showed that a certain animal was "fierce." All but one or two of the test takers failed to recognize the word as printed, although when asked later most of them could pretty much tell you what "fierce," which apparently has some street currency, meant. Obviously, the spelling should be changed to "feerce." Or "feerse." This shit's too hard!

King of the Hill, BTW,has always taken a stiffer approach to characterization than The Simpsons and often goes out of its way to show that a character isn't necessarily ennobled by the mere fact of his ethnicity or sexual orientation. Hank's nasty, grasping Cambodian neighbor, Khan (sp?), for instance, is the kind of Asian immigrant---one kind of Asian immigrant, at least---you never see much in the mainstream media but with whom those of us in the real world are familiar. (The Sopranos was good about this, too, on occasion.)

Danindc:Keep up the Simpsons observations- and I agree that show went downhill big time in 2001-2002- I think they now have woman writers or something. Gotten really liberal, feminist, GOP is the devil, etc. It is barely watcheable now- really, really unfunny. They've even made Homer unlikeable- something I never thought possible.

EXACTLY the same thing has happened to Southpark.

Just as happened to Dis-ney and will eventually happen to every earthly institution.

michael farris:No, Maneesha, you're not as pretty as Amanda. That's because of your African ancestory. And you'll never be very smart either. But work hard and listen to the white folks and you might be able to get a job as a maid someday.

That parody doesn't work for the same reason that the Onion parody doesn't work - some truths are just too painful [and too obvious] to be funny.

"So, the conventional wisdom insists, what we must do is take poor children away from their homes each day from age one upward and put them in day care staffed by college trained professionals from age one onward, who will mentally stimulate them by speaking with large vocabularies."

Of course, if you tell a liberal that poor people are lousy parents, the liberal will get all pissed at you.

It always seems to me that adults end up appeasing the kids' tastes more than anything else. If the adult is really sneaky and lucky, they might have some small input or modification on TV programs, foods, etc. The whole notion that adults are imposing gender roles and other social patterns on kids is completely backwards.

A crazy man once said to be like little children and you can enter the Kingdom. But they killed him, so who knows if it was good advice.

I always thought the Simpsons was boring and didnt like/watch it much tho I did laugh at the clever lines...til i came across Family Guy. This show is LOL funny and it made the Simpsons totally unwatchable for me.I cringe at that crummy show!Ya see,Lisa is sooo bright and she's good too,and Bart is deep down a good kid,and they all love each other etc ad nauseum! The Family Guy is there to make people(well,guys mainly)laugh.And,like a Navy Seal sharpshooter,its always on target! Speaking of the pirates,I now hear that the pirate problem will NOT be resolved until Somalia is "stabilized",and turned into a nice country.(I guess hiring paid killers to uhm,kill the pirates will never work. )Now we have to go to Somalia and take their kids out and teach them A)To talk good,B)The obiquitous "Anger Management",& C)"Conflict Resolution"...the white mans burden is a wearisome one!

This probably had to do with the viewer demographics of the FOX network circa 1990. Most of the shows were black or black oriented.Even Married with Children? How many Black shows have a lead that scored four touchdowns in one game?

Josh: Speaking of the pirates,I now hear that the pirate problem will NOT be resolved until Somalia is "stabilized",and turned into a nice country.(I guess hiring paid killers to uhm,kill the pirates will never work. )Now we have to go to Somalia and take their kids out and teach them A)To talk good,B)The obiquitous "Anger Management",& C)"Conflict Resolution"...the white mans burden is a wearisome one!Why am I getting the sinking feeling that "stabilizing" Somalia is going to involve dumping half its population on Dubuque?

So the language gappers have decided that an effect of intelligence differences is the cause. Smart people have large vocabularies. If everyone had large vocabularies, we'd all be smart. Sadly, smart kids just tend to pick up new words with little effort.

How long will it take before they realize that smart people know more math too?

Drilling vocabulary doesn't seem to work very well. Dimmer kids never learn it or forget it fast. People who try to incorporate drilled vocabulary into every speech tend to do it badly.

Haven't lots of people noticed that black professionals are particularly likely misuse words that they think they know?

It might be time for some of you to go to your local community college to get a refresher ebonics course, I think your certifications ran out right about the time "good times" went on hiatus. What we have here is "Honk-ebonics"

Mike Farris, you eally ought to take a statistics course. Women are shorter than men. Are ALL women shorter than ALL men? Of course not. On average, women are shorter than men. Nonetheless only a moron would tell a 6' tall woman she is shorter than a 2"6" male midget.

One can never know how an individual will turn out. One can only calculate the odds. And with larger and larger population sizes the results are almost a certainty.

"I always thought the Simpsons was boring and didnt like/watch it much tho I did laugh at the clever lines...til i came across Family Guy. This show is LOL funny and it made the Simpsons totally unwatchable for me"

Some episodes of Family Guy are unwatchable for me. Talk about unrepentant SWPL leftism. Gag.

Michael Farris: What a pointless ad hominem attack from usually one of the more thoughtful and intelligent commenters.

"'By the end of his twelve years on prime-time television,' the Pearls inform us, 'Archie Bunker, America’s best-known bigot, had come to raise a Jewish child in his home, befriend a black Jew, go into business with a Jewish partner, enroll as a member of Temple Beth Shalom, eulogize his close friend at a Jewish funeral, host a Sabbath dinner, participate in a bat mitzvah ceremony, and join a group to fight synagogue vandalism.'"

For all Lear's smugness, he and his writers made Archie three-dimensional and always allowed him to get in some good zingers and one-liners among the overtly bigoted or absurdly blusterly stuff. Although I am not an expert on the show's chronology, I suspect that most of the character-neutering events described above happened in the show's disastrous final 4-5 seasons, when the other three main actors left and eventually the show was renamed.

Lear also claimed he based Bunker on his own father (who was obviously not biased against Jews, but was against blacks). Perhaps that is why Archie was always more likable than the British original was (or is said to have been - I've never seen it).

Ya see,Lisa is sooo bright and she's good too,and Bart is deep down a good kid,and they all love each other etc ad nauseum! --Josh

The Simpson females were always too goody-goody, which is why the show was best watched in tandem with Married With Children on the original Fox schedule. The Bundy women were more than venal enough for balance. (Not that the men were saints, but they were so incompetent it didn't matter.)

I've got to echo other sentiments that The Simpsons is unwatchable now. The movie was surprisingly good for some reason, they obviously got different writers for it. It couldn't have been THAT good though, because despite my vague recollection of it being fairly funny, I can't recall a single line of dialogue or scene except for the ending. Contrast this with my near photographic account of classic Simpsons episodes.

King of the Hill is definitely underrated, its best episodes rival even the best Simpsons episodes. It, however, has also fallen victim to new episodes being pretty bad.

"So the language gappers have decided that an effect of intelligence differences is the cause. Smart people have large vocabularies. If everyone had large vocabularies, we'd all be smart. Sadly, smart kids just tend to pick up new words with little effort."

I agree, it's largely just a cargo cult mentality.

"Haven't lots of people noticed that black professionals are particularly likely misuse words that they think they know?"

I've noticed that and it really makes me cringe. Am I allowed to use the word "uppity" on here?

Truth continues to rise in my estimation. Good crack about Good Times..I agree, but I must note that he didn't give us the correct, updated Ebonics version of the sentence, either. I'm a little disappointed.

BTW, back in The Simpsons' heyday (about 1992) I was in El Paso on business, and surfed across a local Spanish-language station airing the "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish" episode, where Homer thinks he's going to die from eating improperly prepared fugu.

Hearing the Japanese restaurant workers speaking in Mexican-tinged Spanish was rather surreal - as was hearing the same actor do the Larry King celebrity voice cameo at the end (which kinda kills the joke, IYAM).

SWPL elite don't, as a rule, know anything about Hispanics, but Salma Hayeck recently guest stared on 30 Rock in a surprisingly perfect pitch account of Hispanic culture. If the writers there can get it right, maybe the elites are beginning to realize...

Oooh, I have fun game. Let's convince the gappers that on average, higher IQ people know about Star Trek than lower IQ people. Ghetto schools will drill the prime directive into all those little minds.

For all Lear's smugness, he and his writers made Archie three-dimensional and always allowed him to get in some good zingers and one-liners among the overtly bigoted or absurdly blusterly stuff.I wonder if anyone's ever coated a poison pill in chocolate?

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.